I truly never expected this to happen again, but there is no mistaking it.

This isn't something you get to simply forget.

The ringing came as invasive as ever, accompanying all of the senses with dense, pure darkness. It robbed my conscious, taking my vision and all to either shield me from myself or use me for its own listing.

Despite the blackout, I can feel myself moving.

I'm awake.

As if to be rewarded, or rather punished for my stroke of intelligent thought, the world starts to return to me — slowly, blurry, muffled...red.

Please, no.

My eyelids prove to be impossibly heavy, prohibiting me from seeing anything around me clearly, leaving the worst to my imagination and the reality under the blurred lens to my incurable assumptions.

It's only when I force my eyes open for a full second that I see a figure amongst the haze stalking towards me moving perfectly in step with the slow motion picture. I couldn't run if I tried, but to my own astoundment, I don't think I wanted to.

With each paralyzed second focusing all of my energy into sight, it's hair becomes more definitively black, it's eyes more searing, and his words much less smothered. In some risible irony that must only be existent in a twisted simulation like this, it seems he turned out to be the antidote.

He called out to me something that sounded like my name and as my eyes drag themselves to my hands with a clearer view, it seems the title may be all too appropriate.

Stained a different race once more, some red crossbreed between the Devil and Hell itself, I have to laugh at how I wear blood so casually, and how it eagerly awaits to coat me so heavily until I am consumed by utter and complete blackness.

My shoulders sag as if they have been holding up the last of my denial, my breath pants as if I had been sprinting away from certitude, but all I could do was look down at the two creations of my body that only know how to destroy and whisper a single, tearless cry into my accepted submission, "Oh fuck."

"Safiya." His voice was low, stern, but he approached me with a paradoxical cautiousness that feared I might break with a step too far.

Steadying my breath, my eyes fall to an almost sedative calm that comes with a helpless defeat. I held my hands out in front of me — to keep them away or to get a better look I don't know — before dragging my eyes up to meet his. "What did I do?"

Loki simply looked, narrowing his eyes into the space between my hands like they held a secret that wasn't already painfully obvious.

"What did I do?" I pushed.

He drew his full attention to my face, running his eyes across every feature and shaking his head almost elusively. Such regard brought a softness to his voice I never thought he was capable of, and for a second I couldn't recognize it as his own.

"You didn't do anything, love."

It wasn't the words that had rendered me speechless. The sight of my ironically lifeful, shaking hands had done that well enough. But he captured my eyes for a moment, luring them successfully enough to break my fixation on the massacre in front of me, and for just a few seconds all I could see was him.

I suppose he had his own sight of destruction in front of him. It's everywhere — in us, between us, standing across from us. I mean here I stood in front of him, a nuclear bomb in the flesh whose very existence is so ruinous that it seems I don't even need to be conscious anymore to level structure to the ground. Apparently my eyes are more bloody than my hands ever could be, because he chose instead to hold an insane attentiveness to every move they made as if he were watching a train wreck he couldn't yet quite understand, but couldn't look away from.

It was an arresting sight watching him try to make sense of something so trivial. My head shook up at him on its own accord before the consciousness came to me that I suddenly wanted to do nothing but push him away. I don't want his time or attention. No — I don't want him to be giving me his time and attention, or any energy of his energy whatsoever. Not even god...any of the gods — whoever is fucking out there if anyone even is — could ever know why I felt strikes of pain that grew more potent with each furrow of his eyebrow and narrowing of his eyes. He just kept drilling, embedding himself into me.

Guilt. It's guilt.
Are you going to pretend you don't
know this feeling better than anything else?

He was dominating in more ways than the word itself, challenging the influence of the darkness itself and winning. His gaze alone was enough for me to not realize he had taken the last of the precious steps between us.

"You woke up choking on air," He spoke softly. "Then you started pacing the room..."

He trailed off his words when my eyes close. Perhaps it seemed like I didn't want to hear it, but it was more of a learned helplessness. A lazy way to address a truth I can't win against.

But he didn't give me more than a few seconds in an isolation I desperately wanted. He reached out for my hand, and I violently drew in a breath the moment his fingers met my skin.

"Don't touch them," I whisper almost soundlessly, opening my eyes as what seemed to be an appeal in itself.

I tried to take a step back, but he tightened his hold in the most gentle way he could without having to say that there was no deterring him. He cups the outside of my hand and brings the palm to his lips, holding it there with the tender force of a profound, chaste kiss.

My shoulders fall, retreating desperately into myself at the sight of the blood now covering where I was pressed against his face and all I could muster at the sight was a deep, painful groan.

"No," I whisper through a sore moan, my eyes crying tearlessly. "No no no no..."

He didn't say anything. He looked at me through the faint 'no's' that fell from my mouth like helpless pleas, narrowing his eyes softly as if to scream 'why', but the moment didn't come a minute later when his face fell impossibly soft — softer than I've ever thought possible for him and I to allow the other to see. His mouth formed the slightest 'o'.

With the strength that only comes from resolution and some kind of twisted understanding, he turns his face into my hand and presses one last, long kiss before dropping my arm altogether. In a heartbeat, he grabs me and lifts me up against him as if he knew I would protest if he stalled, wrapping my legs around his waist and holding my chest flat against his with a grip like an iron vise.

I fought, of course. There is nothing I hate more in this world than being handled and carrying me like this would not help him heal at all, but there came a moment when his hand trailed up my back and held a firm grasp between the back of my neck and my head with such a strength that yelled indisputably nothing but 'please'.

As a surprise to us both, I let up.

He carried me to the bathroom without a single word, crouching down at the side of the large marble tub with me still in his arms.

He released his hands from my body only to bring both to either side of my face, boring those stern, ice blue eyes into mine as if to freeze me in place. Perhaps he did because when he finally brought me off of him to turn on the water, I sat there and did nothing but stare into nothingness.

With the assertive composure of someone about to start a routine that may be ingrained in their head, he slowly took my hands from me, warding off any resistance with just the flash of strict coldness now taken in his face, and brought them under the running water.

No tears left my eyes. They weren't even wet. My breathing had returned to normal and all I could do for the moments that passed was watch the water turn a crimson red before the tide eventually drained the pool clear of sin.

The red was no longer at the forefront of my mind, but he scrubbed my hands regardless of the clear water. He worked the sponge into the fine details of my hand, carefully cleaning every crack, bringing each fingernail under the weight of the flowing water. With a more clear conscience, all I could feel was the slight roughness of his skin. His hands — just like the rest of him — are certain and strong, with a regal elegance to make anything he does look like art. He caressed both hands like he was molding them into new, all without that condescending smirk he wears so well. I thought I'd find it. I think I really wanted to find it, but his face was just as still as mine.

Slowly, I took my hands from him, and he hesitantly let me as if he himself had gotten lost in the motions. I turned to him, looking up to acknowledge the face that wore my shade of blood so shamelessly.

I grabbed a towel from the side, running it briefly under the water before bringing it to his face to clean him off.

It was a dense, heavy coating that spread on his cheek and around his mouth, but I worked at it, and he took it. He stared down at me as I sat under him, his eyes moving slowly from one of mine to the other without saying a single word.

That was until I flinched when I had to run the cloth over his jaw three times before it was clean.

He laid those eyes beyond the surface of my own and spoke with a velvet mercy that I would have thought him a stranger if I hadn't watched him speak.

"You believe you're beyond redemption."

I brought my eyes to him for just a second, holding the stare which consequently slowed my hands. Taking a deep, soundless breath in, I move my gaze back to cloth, following my now returned movements along the surface of his skin. "I know you can't see it," I speak. "This just makes me feel better."

"Look at me," he whispers.

I glide the cloth up by his temples, watching the gestures of my own hands. "I am."

His eyes followed the path of mine and I almost didn't hear the soft demand amongst my diversion. "Look at me," he repeats. And this time, I did. Right into his eyes. "Look. Until you don't fear it."

I challenged him at that moment, desperately seeking any way to make this a standoff of some sorts, but he opened himself, willing to take any blows. "I'm not scared of blood."

"I didn't say that," he said straightly. "It's the possibility that you don't ruin everything you touch."

If I could have gotten any colder, I did at that moment.

Damn him.

Damn him to fucking hell.

I dropped the towel with my eyes fixed on his, neither of us letting up despite ourselves. Has it ever been so blatantly clear before now that he's armed with mirrored eyes? Even within the depths of the deep blue, he forces my reflection as his own deflection, showing me everything I don't want to see, but I can never look away easily. And apparently neither can he.

Frozen, reflective, arresting eyes.

Yet somehow it's in those mirrors that I can see his face the same as mine. It shouldn't be, and I think I may still be in whatever sick reality I woke up in because there should be no reason for him to be looking as pained as I am, even if he's hiding it.

This is his chance. I've offered much more tonight than my head on a silver platter.

Why isn't he slitting my throat?

Shaking my head just to feel some kind of control, I stand and start towards the bedroom. His footsteps followed me out slower than I thought, but they stopped in the doorway, forcing me to look back at him after adding more wood to the fire.

Unmoved, leaning on one side with his arms crossed loosely across his chest, it's as if he siphoned all the energy from the body into the weight of his stare.

It certainly felt like it.

They ran down my body, looking as if to freeze me in place. But I wouldn't give him the chance.

"You need to rest," I snap, mindlessly straightening up anything around me to distract me from the feeling of his full attention.

"I'm fine."

"Great," I huff. "Then I'll be going."

I don't make it three steps to the door before his hand wraps around my arm with a steel grip. Any reminisce of that surprising softness was gone, but by no means was he any less attentive.

"No."

The word was absolute, brooking no contradiction. There was no challenge, and he didn't even dare me to try to fight. Looking down at me like he was, his eyes spoke so he didn't have to, beaming in astounding certainty; We are pausing the game. Whether you like it or not.

I slowly twisted myself out of his hold, keeping my eyes fixed on him until the very last second before I turned my back. Heading back to the fire, I grabbed a blanket from the chair and wrapped it around me, closing myself out as if I were alone.

I don't need warmth. I really don't need the light of the flames either, but I sat on the ground in front of them like I was reading every spark and crackle for their belligerent insight that might as well just be intellectual insults.

I've definitely met my quota for the night, but for the first time in a very, very long time, I would rather take the blows of the light than spend another second in the reality darkness had thrown me in.

Maybe he felt the same. Maybe not, but Loki spent the next few moments steadily making his way over to the ground next to me. He sat slowly, drawing one knee up and cooly resting his arm against his thigh, letting his finger roam absentmindedly around his mouth.

If I didn't know any better, it would look like he was debating on whether or not to speak, but there was still the absence of our roaring silence and neither of us would break this gift again unless we had to.

I guess this couldn't wait.

"It was Earth."

I kept my eyes fixed ahead of me to the flames, but in the corner of my eye, I could see the movement of his fingers slow.

"What?"

"He wanted you to attack Earth," I whisper lowly but no less straight. "You told me when you were in the cell that you didn't want to rule. You said we needed you."

Silence.

He isn't one to deflect with silence. That silver tongue is enough of a weapon. It's rare his opponent recognizes it as such before they meet their own doom, but here he chose silence. A deep, profound silence that I suppose spoke its own words.

"Yes."

I almost didn't recognize his voice. Maybe I just didn't expect him to ever grant me such pleasantry as truth, but in all honesty, whether it be contradictory to my own words, I may have wanted to ignore the reality myself.

My voice leaves my mouth before I could challenge myself. "You didn't want Earth, but you needed to take it."

He scoffed as if it were the most ridiculous thing in the world. "Don't you dare think that I don't want to rule."

"I believe you," I whisper, keeping the softness in tone despite his defense, "but not Earth."

The tension that shot through his body kept him stiff for a moment later, but he slowly melted into himself, meeting my level of vulnerability rather than exploiting it.

For us both, I suddenly wish he wouldn't speak. Never have I wanted more the god than the man.

"No." He shifts his weight, running his fingers thoughtfully through his hair. "Not Midgard."

Rather helplessly, I turned to him. I've seen his profile countless times before, but I felt as if I were memorizing each line for the first time with a new affinity. Maybe it was the warm tone of the fire reflecting off his skin — quite literally seeing him in a different light — but he looked so..different. Yet painfully familiar.

His eyes stay locked on the flames ahead, perhaps aware that my own pair were running in and through his face because he took a deep breath in, barely audible, before parting his lips again. "If I didn't take it, he would have."

"What worse could he have done than bringing down all of New York?"

He closed his eyes slowly, opening them a long few seconds later. "Earth existing was not in his plans." He turned his head slowly to meet my gaze straight on, speaking lowly as if each word were an apology and a warning all in one. "If I didn't persuade him to give it to me.."

His words trailed off as he looked from my one eye to the other, exchanging the conclusion in the full silence carried within the stare.

I could draw my own conclusions, but that wasn't what I read. Instead, I saw that he didn't know what his friend would do either. Only but an idea to its extent. Significantly, clearly written in every movement he didn't mean to let slip, his time in that allegiance was the first time Loki was not the master of his own fate. And that, beyond anything his friend was capable of, was what scared him the most.

Perhaps that is what all of this is — regaining the control that the titan stole from him. So when did his warpath start? Upon resurrection when his friend stole his choice to die from him, or before New York when Loki had been commanded to do something from someone who was not his father?

Is it a prideful vendetta? Most likely yes, but does that make it any less sincere?

I think my fascination with Loki stems from just that. Right when I think I know the god, he shows me everything I don't about the man — the complexity that can be found in the simplest of acts and the power that extends beyond the useless titles he's given. I've never met a more paradoxical person, one who finds order in chaos and opportunity in chains.

I suppose that's why I expect so much.

I narrowed my eyes into his, subtly enough not to be taken as a challenge. "Was losing it part of your plan?"

His jaw ticked and his eyes seemed to contemplate whether to burn and freeze me entirely. "No."

Simply stated. Followed by empty silence.

But I waited.

He tensed his jaw again before licking his lips, forcefully parting his mouth with his tongue. "I was supposed to hold the throne. Regulate. Keep the planet out of his hands."

Another silence. It's almost comical, to me at least, that he would think I would take that as a conclusion.

He's going to kill me sooner or later, right?

"But?" I persisted.

He closed his eyes, tilting his head up to the ceiling as if to pray for aid with a deep, inaudible sigh. "I was a bit...distracted," he seethed.

Oh. That was me.

Ruining his sense of fate, I suppose.

Even though his eyes were closed, I tried my best to keep the smile subdued. It was a disgraceful effort, no lie, so I moved my head forward, taking the lingering remnants of my sick pride with me. "I would say sorry."

He kicked an eyebrow up before opening his eyes and lowering his face to the flame again. Maybe it was the light bouncing on a weird angle, but I could almost swear I saw a grin tease the corner of his mouth. "I wouldn't expect you to."

We took the silence for what it was. Although we also didn't want to waste its kindness, it was more to feel out the unusual comfort in being able to sit in it. More so, with each other.

We were speaking. Not speaking just to talk, but communicating. Listening to the words unsaid and watching every movement the other makes as a language in itself. But it wasn't to challenge, and somehow the fear that he would use any of this against me was a lot less. It was still a burning reminder under every word I spoke, but most of the sensation was able to rest. We were speaking. Speaking each other's tongue.

After a good moment, I intended to ruin it again. It was a simple thought, but somehow one I thought to be just as urgent as it is trivial.

"Revenge digs two graves, you know."

This time, there was no mistaking the way his lips lifted to one side, even if I did catch it out of the corner of my eye.

"I know," he responded cooly as if it were the one thing he was most assured about in the world. "I don't believe anythings worthwhile if it doesn't drive you completely mad."

"You're too poetic for your own good," I smirk.

He hums, evidently amused. "I'd argue excessively intelligent."

"Oh, you're a genius now?"

"If technicalities are to be considered, yes." He turned towards me, flashing that heartbreaker of a smile.

Damn him. Without my conscious consent, my lips turn up at one side. But it wasn't long before his eyes grew the depth of thought and his smile slowly fell into something more sincere. It's a default of Loki's, I've found. He holds a lean, hungry look of someone who thinks too much. Someone who has seen too much. Such men are dangerous, especially to those on the receiving end.

But this was restrained, absent of any critical conviction. With an emotion lingering that I couldn't quite pinpoint, he blinks at me with heavy lashes and a whisper that would keep the secret from the very air around us. "And so are you."

I stiffen instinctively, which I suppose he predicted because he locked onto my eyes without a flinch.

Damn him ten times over.

I wrench my attention back to the fire in an irrational attempt to lose him. "You can't go digging around my head."

"I didn't this time," he responded lowly, running his eyes down the side of my face with some kind of distant regard.

This was a hard limit, and my face showed it. He ignored it.

"You were one of Midgard's leading astrophysicists by the age of 18. Then not three years later, you're a human right lawyer. I'm no expert on that education system, but that seems entirely impossible without an exorbitant amount of intelligence.'

I'm surprised a muscle in my jaw hasn't popped.

"How did you get that?"

"Please," he scoffs with a ghost of his usual arrogance.

Any trace of a joke fades into the thoughtful silence after no more than a few seconds. His eyes have trained themselves into a routine by now, rather absentmindedly reading every line of my face. With each passing second, I can feel the intelligence behind those blue mirrors grow to my damage.

"How did you get here?" He whispers, painfully soft and earnestly intrigued.

It should feel like feeding into the devil. His fascination with me is in the same nature as mine with him. I want to know what makes him tick, what gets under his skin, why he is the way he is. I want to know everything, and that has since come at my full expense. It's a rather helpless pursuit.

Yet the words slipped my lips candidly, and it took me more than a few seconds to even recognize my own voice.

"I'm angry," I managed, almost voiceless.

When I finished, the disgust I expected to see in his face — the disgust that surely would have lived in Neals — wasn't there. Instead, I saw only...What was that look?

Oh, fucking hell. Empathy. Is that what that looks like?

I turned to look at him, straightly and rather glacial. "I don't want your pity."

He stared right back, taking the directness in stride. "I'm not giving it to you".

Now we met in a standoff. Cold, hard, and unforgiving.

"Even for you, it's quite undeniable," I start calmly. "It's been embraced. Clearly, it's been accepted and I've left trails to prove it." An eyebrow kicks up rather instinctively in defense, seemingly proud. "I ruin everything I touch."

His jaw ticks again, denying any attempts to lighten the idea. The heavy silence took his side, dominating the air around us at my expense once more.

"The things you 'ruin' are already broken," he rasps, tilting his head as if to drill the idea in forcefully.

Slowly but surely, I start to recognize my opponent again. His eyes grew darker, deeper, exposing the depths of each to show that he knew too much. No, he knew too much of the wrong thing, and he was going to use it.

I took the battle air in and let an inaudible breath out, subtly calling on whatever black darkness was around to build myself up. I bored my eyes into his to meet his intensity, not daring to waver. "I guess I need to shoot higher."

His face fell unfathomably serious with a dark, warning tone to match. "Don't lessen what I'm saying about you."

You would think I insulted him from the tone of his voice. His eyes were stern, offended even, as if I were devaluing him and his investment.

Oh. That's just it, isn't it? I swallowed hard the same moment the realization hit me like the concrete wall of a tidal wave.

In his twisted, domineering mind, he had declared with no tolerance of contradiction that I was his. They are the only words I can hear every time someone comes to clean my chambers or whenever Kahlil shows up at my door to escort my every step.

You're mine.

But suddenly, this possession has become something much different than I originally thought. Clearly printed on the surface of his eyes are the words he tries to reassure me with — 'I'm not trying to tame you' — As if those five words overrule any assumption I've had of his previous other two.

Because maybe they do.

Damn him to every hell there is.

I wasn't listening. I don't want to listen. I definitely do not want to listen if it means what I think it means.

But there is no denying it now with the way he is looking at me — like I was a gem and every word against my worth insulted his choice. His investment.

Whatever pedestal he has me on, I don't want to be there. Being his has only shown to come with sickening praise and undoubtful curiosity of myself and who I am. That shouldn't be celebrated. It shouldn't be explored.

It just can't.

He acknowledges the storm brewing in my mind before I can move and suddenly, I feel more like a captive than I ever have in his presence.

"You're ruthless, but for what?" He starts, looking at me with an intensity that paralyzes me completely. "Because you eliminate those not worthy of the power they think they possess? May the gods forgive that you help people who cannot help themselves. The weak-minded praise them for the work you do."

A wave of anger at a degree I have never met before starts growing in the pit of my stomach and he does anything but prevents it from erupting. The gods arresting eyes hold mine, forcing the words into my head with a desperation that borders on feverish.

"Only chaos can bring change, and whether you want to believe it or not, your rage has conviction. That's what makes your power endless. But you don't understand that. You're never going to realize all you can do if you keep holding yourself back — because you think you're a monster."

That was it. I dropped the blanket from around me and stood, furiously walking to the balcony to cover myself in the night sky, letting his words play behind me. I laugh bitterly despite myself, tone dark and cold, as if I were ready for murder, which may not be too far fetched at the moment. He didn't let up, even after I turned my back.

"Just because you can do the things a monster can doesn't mean you are!" He shouts with a force that was too aggressive to be shallow. "It's how you use it, and imagine what you could do if you were just as self-assured as you think you are!"

I whipped around in a heartbeat, eyes no longer warning death, but promising it.

"Don't do that!"

"Do what!" He yells back, showing great restraint in keeping himself back.

"Know me!" I shouted out in blind rage without a second thought. "Don't think you know me!" I corrected.

He laughs coldly as if the idea were the most teeth-grinding thing he has ever heard. "I wish I didn't! I wish I had killed you before I looked in your head. And by all the gods, I wish I could stop this fascination that is going to fucking kill me! But for the life of me, the last thing in this world I want to do is tame you." His eyes flickered into a calm, icy fire, burning me with the flashes of some kind of understanding he tried to hide. Empathy. Shared empathy poured into the unexpectedly composed, "I want to you for all the rage that you are."

He stood by the flames of the fireplace, the light outlining his figure as if it had him full consumed. Perhaps that's why no matter how much restraint the dark god put into keeping himself back, the words just kept spilling from his lips.

In contrast to just a few breaths ago, his voice is only just above a whisper, but it caresses my throat nonetheless in a deceptive grip. Deadly, like red silk.

"You're tearing me apart," he rasps in a way that worships me in heaven and curses me to hell all at once. "You already know how to kill me. There's only one way you can. You're just scared to admit you have to." His face falls even further into a helpless resolve. "You would have to admit that it's already happening."

He allowed the quick silence, but it was no breath of fresh air.

"I'm just the same," he starts again before I could even open my mouth. "Perceptive, yet instinctively selfish. Those don't mix well, do they?" He runs his eyes up and down my face at a slow, languid pace, not caring if his words interfere. "If I want to live, you have to die."

With the most calm in the world, he brings his eyes to finally meet mine directly, no less apologetic. "I need you dead, Safiya."

Maybe I saw it coming. Maybe it has been something I've seemed to always know — the need — but the words don't come as any shock and I felt no such effect other than the realization that I too need him gone. Desperately.

I swallow hard once more, parting my lips for a moment before words decided to leave. "Let me go."

It was almost an order, but he didn't seem to take it as one. Almost as unfazed as I was, he stood silently, watching me with distant investment.

"This will only get worse." I meet his stare head-on, drilling in everything unspoken. "I'm not a good captive."

As usual, his eyes looked much more thoughtful than they should. He took the silence in and studied me intently, subtly coming to a resolution before he declares, "I beg to differ."

My breath hitches gently as he stalks towards me, leaving the fire, but carrying the flame. Maybe if I hadn't felt so paralyzed I would have moved, but I honestly could not be too sure I would want to.

"You love your cave," he breathes, taking the last steps onto the balcony, "And you hate me for drawing you out."

I take a step back as he takes one forward. With our eyes still trained on each other, my back hits against the railing, drawing out a breath he takes as a response.

"I love the darkness just as much. And I hate you endlessly for just the same."

I didn't notice that he took the last of the steps until I tried to move and he grabbed onto the railing on either side of me, capturing me between his arms. He grips tighter when I move back into place, our lips dangerously close.

Never have I been one to shy away, but this was uncharted territory, and whether I'd like to admit it or not, there are no men like him. I look to his chest, feeling the weight of his eyes on me, watching my every move.

"Where am I drawing you out from?" I whisper, the voice uncharacteristically weak. Whether I wanted to know the answer or not was out for consideration, because he spoke after only a few seconds, lowly as if we were in a crowded room and it was only meant for my ears.

"A very comfortable place."

I close my eyes as I bring my head up, opening them only after I knew I would be able to take the sight of him. I had prepared for the worst outcome, therefore I didn't wither on the spot. I didn't necessarily want to expect it, but he gave it to me. In the glance that lasted a second, maybe an hour, we shared words that we only hoped the other would be able to read. It was a clear, unspoken vulnerability that I may have initiated when my eyes screamed 'I don't want to leave that place' and he roared back 'Me neither'.

With the threat on our respective caves in question, we let the silence cool the flame he brought, leaving us in the dark with all that was said and no resolution.

"Stop looking at me," I whisper into his lips, hoping he had the will to do what I can't.

He huffs breathlessly, almost absentmindedly. "You have no idea how much I wish I could."

"I look into your eyes.." He blinks heavily down at me, trailing the words into nothingness and revealing a second later a pair of dark, drunken navy. "Those fucking eyes," he whispers as if it were just to himself.

"You shouldn't tell me that," I whisper back, dropping my eyes to his lips.

Our breaths grow more weight, heavy enough to be felt and acknowledged between us, but in the same moment thanks to the innuendo in my words, the loom of the game comes creeping back and all we look like to each other is defeat.

He tenses his jaw, swallowing down anything that could test his composure any further. "You should go."

I nod slowly, working the words through a light pant, "I should."

Neither of us moves. With our lips more than dangerously close, our eyes naturally gravitate towards the threat, lingering to the point of longing for death.

Loki tightens his grip on the railing, warning me further than the growl that seeped through his teeth. "Go. Now."

I swallow the lump in my throat, staring deeper into his lips.

This is how I win. This is how it usually works. Yet with him, now, I have no control.

What is there to do when lust, my greatest defense, becomes my greatest weakness? Similarly, how do you keep playing a game that cannot be won?

Getting out from his arms without touching him seemed like an impossible feat, but I moved swiftly and beyond hurriedly to save us both from an early defeat.

But there was not much else I can do. Looking back from the door, he stood on the balcony as I left him, gripping the railing for dear life. After I shut it loud enough for him to hear, I leaned up against the door and closed my eyes, left to address the lump that still won't leave my throat.

It is inevitable, it seems. I could take his king now, but watch all of my pieces shatter to the ground as I go.

All reigns will crumble. All kings will perish. All Gods will fall.

But maybe that's just it.

Opening my eyes to the screaming hallway ahead of me, the quiet silence finally recognizing its mistake in its gifting, the one and only piece that matters is suddenly made abundantly clear.

Never again will he ever make me forget.

I am not the fallen.

I am the fall.

...

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Oh my god, hey it's me.

I thought it was about time I did this.

I've been debating for a while over whether or not an author note would ruin the mood or lessen the story in some way, but I couldn't resist any longer. Especially for the next few chapters, I want to be here and talk to you all - or rage, cry, and slap Safiya in the face together. Your choice.

Before anything, thank you for giving me your time and energy and thoughts and attention like it's just so nice and sweet of you and I can never truly express how much I appreciate you being here. I know I say it a bit too often, but I also don't think I will ever stop. Silent or vocal, I love you all.

And thank you for 4k reads! I was smiling for like half an hour! It started to hurt! But I couldn't stop! Okay I will let you go!

See you next week sis with another inappropriately lengthed chapter because I'm incapable of keeping them short, but I swear I will try.

Love you x

Questions, concerns, or absolutely flame me:
Here